For The Blood
by ze-poodle
Summary: A battle from the perspective of a Blood Angel who has succumbed to the Black Rage.


* * *

Blood.

The red liquid flows.

It drips, ripples and pours.

Blood.

It always returns to this. It always returns to that liquid vitality, the universal fuel that is the source of our biological existence.

Without it, we are not human. We are merely desiccated husks, dry skin and empty veins. Blood is life.

And it is life that flows through me now, full of its own unique eddies and swirls.

Life.

Blood.

The blood of Our Father.

The blood of Sanguinius.

* * *

They come again, a horde, a ravening horde of beasts that were once Men. Daemons powered by the unholy sacrifices of their followers, genetically enhanced warriors in power armour and cultists in little more than rags and leather. They come again. And we meet their charge, meet it with our own fury as we clash upon a battlefield watered with the blood of martyrs.

For the Blood, father.

The Rage fills us. It saturates us. It permeates our very blood, and we let it fill us. It is part of us, part of our blood-father. It is His rage that we feel.

It is in the scream of the chainsword, the staccato barrage of the bolter, the roar of the flamer, the reverberation of our jump-packs and the thunder of metal feet on stone.

It is the Flaw. The burr in our perfect blade. The crack in our impenetrable armour. It is our greatest weakness, and our ultimate strength. It is our curse, this Red Thirst.

And for now, we welcome it.

The Chaplain hollers over the boom of artillery firing and the clamour of the previous assault team sent into the melee. He yells for us to stand firm, to resist the Rage. He calls upon our humanity, calls for what little is left of our sanity to prevail for just a few more moments.

It is futile. We are forsaken. We roar, slaver at the teeth and gnash our jaws like animals eager for blood. Now, we are little more than that.

For the Blood, father.

Finally, the Chaplain screams, his voice lost in the din, but the direction he points his chainsword in is all we need. My red-tinted vision, enhanced by the bio-optical sight of my helmet, picks out one unit of Chaos, identical to the rest. At long last, we may fight.

The jump-pack is activated and I soar, soar like my predecessor had on wings of metal and fire. The blood-red sun shines off the red saltire painted onto my black armour. We are the Death Company. We are the Blood Angels.

For the Blood, father.

I want to fight. I want to rip, to tear, to destroy and to drink the tainted blood of my enemies. The boosters bolted onto my shoulder plates propel me at speeds upwards of two hundred kilometres an hour, and it is yet too slow. I see the horde screaming before me, and for one brief moment, the memories come again.

Memories not my own fill me. Memories of a shadowed room, and of two titans duelling, an angel and a demon. Memories of loss.

Memories.

Memories of fire and death. Memories of defeat. Memories of a black claw descending to take us into its steel grasp.

We are one now, inseparable until our death. I am forsaken. My will has faltered for but a second and the rage took me. And it is so that I now drop into the black heart of the horde that we face. Sanguinius and I are one. It is with but a fraction of his strength that I fall upon my enemies, the descendants of his enemies.

For the Blood, father.

We drop from the sky like the very wrath of the Emperor onto the traitors. My feet catch a cultist in the face and I crush him beneath the heavy boots, his body offering nothing more than a soft landing surface. I rise and fire the bolt pistol blindly, uncaring of who the shots hit so long as they hit. A berserker rushes at me and the pistol snaps to the right unthinking to unload three explosive bolts into his face, blowing through the faceplate and causing his brains to exit via the back of his skull. The chainsword in my right hand swings and cuts three cultists in half in a torrent of blood. A stray bolt hits my helmet, and in a moment of lucidity I throw it down before the short-circuiting can fry my face.

Blood. It is in the air. I taste it on my tongue as it covers my now-exposed face. It is exquisite, a forbidden taste that brings with it the hints of damnation. The Rage grows ever stronger because of it. And I grow in strength, muscles bulging and veins nearly exploding to keep up with the flow of sheer power.

A traitor marine swings at me with a chainaxe, and I drop the pistol to devote the strength of my other arm to meet his swing. He roars, a bellow of pure, unholy rage.

I roar back, louder, and this startles him.

We duel, a recreation of that most ancient duel, a re-enactment of my Primarch's end. I swing the sword two-handed and it cuts into the side of his torso, chewing great chunks of metal out of the armour with a shower of sparks. It doesn't cut through, and I cannot risk the teeth catching.

The axe swings again and the sword rises to meet it yet again. Blades met in a clash of ancient metal. We lean into each other, hoping to drive one another back even an inch, to win even a small victory. Our duel is not simply one of strength; it is one of rage as well. Then the pressure twists the drivetrain full circle, and with a shriek of tortured metal the chainsword bursts and flies apart.

The berserker grins madly as he rears back, as he swings, as the axe passes under my arm into my upper chest, cutting through black plate and fibro-muscle and into the flesh beneath.

Pain.

The axe is half-buried into my chest. I feel my primary heart fail, feel my lungs fill with my own blood. A paroxysm of pain.

_Pain._

Pain like the Father's pain.

Pain such as this is incomparable to His pain. It is meaningless, and fades before the pain of the Black Rage as it rises to take me in its iron grip. The bloodlust fills me, and I lose sense of self.

For the Blood.

Father.

* * *

I lift the berserker with my right hand, and with strength fuelled by bloodlust I break him over my knee, throwing his beaten body into a group of cultists. I bay my victory to the scarlet sky, and fall upon the traitors with my fists, armoured hands lashing left and right, breaking necks and ripping apart armoured bodies as one would tear through rice paper. Servo-motors whine as I crush a skull in my left hand without even looking to see its owner. I rip open the throat of one mutated marine, and drink the blood that sprays from his wound. A booted foot lashes out to catch a traitor in the kneecap with a sickening crunch, and a vicious uppercut follows. With brutal force the adamantinum knuckles meet the unarmoured jaw, and there is a wet splat as his face joins with the back of his skull.

I am the Rage. I am Sanguinius.

The Chaplain yells at me, something about restraining myself, about retaining my sanity. His voice, once able to quell the most violent of black moods, is merely swallowed up in the black cloud that hovers over me.

He cries out my damnation, curses me for failing to restrain myself.

It matters not.

All that matters is that the blood flows.

It has to flow.

For the Blood.

Alone, I charge the enemy even as they regroup on a hilltop. Weaponless, mortally wounded, fuelled by nothing more than the spirit of my blood-father, I charge.

Sanguinius.

I fall upon them in a flurry of maddened blows. The blood rages and the frenzy consumes me utterly.

Sanguinius.

For the Blood.

Sanguinius.

* * *

A/N: Blood Angels kick ass. Need I say more?

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